no, that is not correct Jono. Some places like Germany & Switzerland have differing (much stricter) regs.
For example, you cannot fit any aftermarket parts (wheels, exhausts, etc) to cars in Germany & Switzerland unless they are approved and TuV tested, and this applies to imported pre-reg'd cars too.
A friend got around this by having his car registered to a family members house in the uk, but kept in Switzerland. It had to return to the UK a couple of times a year to say it was still uk regd, else he would have had to go through the swiss registration process.
Also, things like power and emissions restrictions must be applied to imported vehicles to be reg'd in that country. The classic here on bikes is the 100bhp limit on French bikes, but not on any other countries, so someone importing a UK bike to France has a hard time to get it registered.